Both Elon Musk, billionaire owner of Twitter, and popular podcast host Joe Rogan, decided to mercilessly shred an opinion columnist for MSNBC who made the very strange claim back in March 2022 that somehow, physical fitness is being used as some diabolical tool being used mustache-twirling far-right extremists and white supremacists to draw in new recruits. They even make a reference to Adolph Hitler. I mean, that totally legitimizes the argument, right? Surely all the leftist boxes have been ticked here, right?
“Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University in Washington, D.C., claimed in the article, which MSNBC retweeted on Monday, that the ‘far right has taken advantage of pandemic at-home fitness trends to expand its decade-plus radicalization of physical mixed martial arts (MMA) and combat sports spaces.’ Twitter and Tesla boss Musk and podcast superstar Rogan, who is a well-known fitness buff, were quick to ridicule the claim,” the Daily Wire reported.
“MSNBC thinks you’re a nazi if you work out lmaooo,” Musk stated in a tweet, going on to add, “Parody & reality are becoming indistinguishable.”
“Being healthy is ‘far right.’ Holy f***,” Joe Rogan stated in his response to column.
I know that your brain is probably dangerously close to exploding from the sheer stupidity of this, but there’s actually more. Miller-Idriss has proclaimed that new recruits to the extreme right are lured into the movement “with health tips and strategies for positive physical changes,” going on to say, “researchers” have remarked that these individuals are then given invitations to join in closed-chat groups.
And now it’s time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The Hitler drop.
The author of the column went on to cite the vile historical figure by saying that in his book, “Mein Kampf,” you can clearly see that he was “fixated on boxing and jujitsu, believing they could help him create an army of millions whose aggressive spirit and impeccably trained bodies, combined with ‘fanatical love of the fatherland,’ would do more for the German nation than any ‘mediocre’ tactical weapons training.”
So if you are a boxer or practice jiu jitsu, you better watch out, because you’re one step away from joining the KKK. I really do feel like I’m dumber for having read this, don’t you?
“The intersection of extremism and fitness leans into a shared obsession with the male body, training, masculinity, testosterone, strength and competition,” Miller-Idriss said in the article. “Physical fitness training, especially in combat sports, appeals to the far right for many reasons: fighters are trained to accept significant physical pain, to be ‘warriors,’ and to embrace messaging around solidarity, heroism, and brotherhood. It’s championed as a tool to help fight the ‘coming race war’ and the street battles that will precede it.”
Never mind the fact that a huge percentage of individuals who are involved in combat sports like Boxing, Mixed Martial Arts, Karate, and so on, are from minority groups. Guess those guys are white supremacists too, right? Human beings, especially men, were created by God for fellowship with other people. Men need a group of other strong men to form a brotherhood and to be part of something greater than themselves. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, as that’s how we are literally made to be.
That desire for brotherhood does not, in any way, automatically translate to being a far-right extremist, a white supremacist, or a racist. Good grief. How can this columnist be this brain dead and still be breathing?
Other users on Twitter were also flabbergasted by the claim made in the article, including one individuals who wrote that “MSNBC fears fitness, home schooling, parental rights, and religious liberty,” while another stated that the claim “seems like an insane conspiracy theory to me, but I’m probably just “far-right” too.”
Apparently, Miller-Idriss is a living, walking embodiment of that Toy Story meme, only instead of seeing stupid people everywhere, she sees everyone who is basically into anything not inherently, deeply left-wing as being a right-wing extremist.
In fact, in March, she wrote an article that claimed homeschooling is linked to far-Right groups, alleging it is “a strategy that has long been key to white supremacist groups: indoctrinating their children through curriculum designed to teach white supremacy, while keeping them out of what they see as the brainwashing multiculturalism of public schools.”
“Homeschooling as a strategy to indoctrinate children into white supremacy is nothing new,” she added. “There’s a reason why Germany, some 80 years after the Holocaust, does not allow homeschooling: because they see the state as having an obligation to teach democratic citizenship and socialize children in ways that lead to the rejection of antisemitic and extremist ideologies,” she finished.
Ugh.